Harmonised questions on long-term limiting physical or mental
health conditions that limit daily activity are designed to
identify respondents who may have rights under section 6 of the
Equality Act 2010
[34].
Long-term limiting physical or mental health conditions are
therefore taken as a proxy for disability.

Table 20: Age profile of those with long-term limiting
conditions,
SSCQ
2014

Proportion in Age Group (Row %)

Adults

Col%

16-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65+

Limiting condition

5.4

9.0

10.5

15.9

18.6

40.6

1,029,600

23%

No limiting condition

16.6

17.9

16.7

18.7

14.0

16.1

3,387,000

76%

Older people are more likely to suffer a long-term limiting
health condition. 40% of those with limiting conditions are aged
65+, compared with 16% of those without such a condition. For this
reason, age standardisation is applied to many of the analyses in
the following section. For more information on this process, see
section
11.10.

Where formal testing is conducted, the group without long-term
limiting health conditions is used as the reference category for
comparison. Where p-values are provided, a value of less than 0.05
indicates statistical significance at the 95% level. For more
information about statistical tests, see
section
11.11.

Summary Findings

Unsurprisingly, the long-term limiting conditions group have
considerably lower levels of good/very good general health than
the rest of the population (27.5% compared with 88.6% in the
non-disabled group).

The smoking rate for this group is around 40% higher than for
the rest of the population. Smoking prevalence among those with
long-term limiting conditions has fallen in line with the change
at national level since 2012, down 2.2 points to 27.7% in
2014.

People with long-term physical or mental health conditions
that limit their daily activities have lower levels of mental
wellbeing.

The gap in perception of the local crime rate has narrowed
since 2012; the disabled group are still less likely to say that
crime in their area has reduced or stayed the same in the last
two years (74.8% compared with 78.2%) but the difference has
reduced from 5.2 to 3.4 percentage points in 2014.

3.1 General Health

Table 21: General health by disability,
SSCQ
2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

2014

Change

grp %

+/-

from 2013

from 2012

Disability

Limiting condition

27.5

± 1.5

+0.7

-0.4

No limiting condition

88.6

± 0.6

-0.7

+0.3

As might be expected, there is a clear association between
disability and self-assessed general health. Those without a
limiting long-term condition are three times as likely to report
"Good/Very good" health as those with a limiting condition.

Changes over time from 2012 are not statistically
significant.

Disability is correlated with age; those reporting a long-term
limiting health condition tend to be older. Controlling for this
difference through age standardisation boosts the contribution to
the group level statistic made by the younger members of the
disabled group, who tend to rate their health higher. It therefore
weakens the correlation between disability and general health
somewhat, and the proportion of the disabled group reporting
good/very good health rises to 30.4%. This is clearly still a much
lower rate than those without limiting long-term conditions.

Smoking is more common among those with long-term limiting
health conditions. Over a quarter of those reporting such a
condition smoke, compared with around a fifth of those with no
limiting condition.

This difference is accentuated when we account for the age
differences between the two groups, as shown in Table 24. Because
the disability rate increases with age, while younger people are
more likely to smoke (probably due to higher mortality rates for
smokers), this shows that smoking rates are consistently higher for
the long-term sick and disabled across the board, as confirmed in
Figure 8.

The mental wellbeing of those reporting a long-term limiting
health condition is around 2.8 percentage points lower than of
those without such a condition.

Table 26: Average
SWEMWBS
score by disability, 2014

2014

Mean

+/-

Disability

Limiting condition

22.3

± 0.1

No limiting condition

25.1

± 0.1

When the different age distribution of the long-term limiting
conditions group is taken into account, this difference widens
slightly to 3.1 points. Those with a long-term limiting condition
have lower levels of mental wellbeing than those without.

Limiting conditions include people with physical and/or mental
health conditions that limit daily activities. It is therefore not
surprising that this group have lower levels of mental
wellbeing.

There is no statistically significant difference between those
with and without long-term limiting conditions in their provision
of care to others.

Table 28: Provision of unpaid care by disability,
SSCQ
2014

2014

grp %

+/-

Disability

Limiting condition

18.4

± 1.4

No limiting condition

17.7

± 0.8

Both the prevalence of limiting long-term conditions and the
prevalence of unpaid care provision generally increase with age.
When age standardisation is applied, the difference between the
groups increases further, however this difference is still not
statistically significant (p=0.07).

3.5 Perceptions of Local Crime Rate

People with long-term limiting conditions are less likely to
report that crime in their area has reduced or stayed the same.
Around three quarters report this change, while 78% of those
without limiting conditions do so. However, since 2012 this
difference has narrowed. The difference in 2014 was 3.4 percentage
points, whereas in 2012 it was 5.1 percentage points.

Analysis of Confidence in Police is conducted on latent classes
across all six questions. These statistics are in development and
are therefore provided in a supplementary paper available from the
SSCQ
website.
[35]